Notes 9/11/26 And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban nights are li...

Notes 9/11/26 And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the night there. I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on their magical powers. They are immaterial; that is to say, one sees but the lighted windows. Squares after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will. — Ezra Pound, “Patria Mia” This quote has occupied my mind on several of the last 10 or so anniversaries of 9/11. It captures not only the awe I continue to have for my home for nearly all of the last 30 years, but also the sense of beauty and concentrated energy, the poetry it possess and inspires. But this year it also strikes me as an observation of destruction, its “square after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether” sounding the absence of buildings, not their presence. Traces, persistent light, memory. But the…